Ad Vice

Working with both video and music forms as a member of, respectively, the art collective X-PRZ and the band SWIPE, Cokes employs appropriation and re-presentation in his art. In Ad Vice his source material includes advertising slogans, rock lyrics, and music videos. Cokes offers one phrase after another, rendered in an "edgy," advertisement-ready typeface, superimposed on degraded video images of rock musicians. Addressing the viewer with direct questions or suggestions, Cokes poses bald statements that could be philosophical platitudes or commercial tag-lines. The soundtrack, a processed-guitar piece by SWIPE, resembles a "rock song," but features inaudible lyrics, no chorus, and a deceptively shifting hook. Ad Vice inhabits the realm of the music-video, only to use that form's language against itself in a subtle critique of the interactions of desire and commerce in a capitalist culture.